Next in our series on digital marketing, let us explore the prevalent trends.
Every New Year presents fresh marketing challenges. Armed with a meticulous marketing strategy with some fore-thought to deal with what is predicted for the following year, these challenges can be easily overcome. Thus, marketing goals are set, based on the market predictions for your industry.
A few digital marketing strategies that were predicted for 2016 are:
Responsive design – The requirement of a website to have easy navigation in mobile devices too, has shifted focus on the importance of a responsive design and was predicted to be adopted in greater scale in 2016.
‘Connecting’ with social media – A ‘voice’ on social media that would directly connect with its audience, instead of a conventional ad. Every logo was expected to have a unique face, in the digital world, in 2016.
Blogs – Honest and informative content does more than just improve SEO. Year 2016 was expected to see a surge in using blogging as digital marketing tool.
Apps – Increased usage of mobile devices would open newer avenues for business entities in 2016. They would bring out more apps to host reward programs, provide information or offer deals. Apps keeps the business entity in the focus of the end user, every time the mobile is used.
Live videos – Streaming videos to social networks is easy with specific apps like Periscope. Target audience can be reached instantly and sharing experience with them is easier. These are interactive enough to allow users to comment or opine.
2016 so far…
The first and the second quarters of 2016 has of course seen mobile optimization as a default and not a choice. Catering to the requirements of mobile audience helps increase the leads and conversions.
Voice search has moved SEO to the next level. Voice search optimization has become vital as people tend to use different search terms during speaking and typing.
Blogging is favoured much, for its possibilities. The stress is more on long form content, which the content marketers have embraced beautifully.
Interesting enhancements in in-app functionalities have been made by various social media platforms. The assured user experience is predicted to reflect in the ROI. Optimizing for the app store has become vital for visibility.
Videos easily hook your customers. This mass appeal has been utilized to the maximum to fetch higher engagement rates. Search result pages with such videos drives more traffic to the website.
The Future
With mobile Wi-Fi and many other technological advancement, snapchat has become the mobile messaging and multimedia app that is ‘trending’. The app has a customer base that covers the entire age spectrum of mobile users. Hence snapchat will be used by the advertisers to narrate their stories to their target audience.
Marketing automation helps in reaching the target audience through well-defined metrics. It can be used to create a sales funnel, by sending customized messages and information to cater to the specific needs of target customers. Being able to reach out to them regularly can help you plan your communication systematically and eventually help in customer retention.
Today’s customers do their own research they consume a particular product or service. Customer-specific and issue-specific content alone will, in future, maximize conversion rates and bring in a better ROI.
Cross-channel integration is a possibility predicted for the future. Such successful convergence can open up endless opportunities. Lee Odden, the CEO of the Minneapolis digital marketing agency, Top Rank Marketing, points out the Microsoft and LinkedIn strategy, where LinkedIn data is integrated into Microsoft’s Office 365 service, as a classic example of the convergence of two difference channels.
Live video streaming is expected to take over the digital arena. New audience are ready to consume your information / solutions / services. Consistency is the key. Once the day of streaming is determined, sticking to the regime captures and sustains new audience.
World Wide Web – lesser known layers
Popular search engines retrieve only the visible data available. It is estimated that for every single website retrieved in search results, there are about 2500+ other websites that are rendered inaccessible by passcodes or special softwares, and are hence invisible! A change in the algorithms of the big players like Google, Yahoo or Bing, can help in reaching the unaccessed web, resulting in an evolution in internet search.
